5 ms·

The Anatomy of a Notification

44 points by filament 15y ago

nmcfarl 15y ago
Reading this it became clear that it probably makes sense to build a "boxcar for growl" - unfortunately I didn't find such a thing with a quick google. Still it seems to be history/central inbox for your unread notifications doesn't just make sense for your phone - it makes sense everywhere you receive notifications.
- Groxx 15y ago
  An interesting idea... but IMO, Growl tends to be used for very transient information. X sent a message = Y, Z finished, etc, all things which are likely visible some other way on your screen. An icon with a flag / number / color change, for instance. Growl tends to provide enough data to determine if you should switch applications then; I don't know if most of the messages have any real value beyond ~ a minute. Especially as they're often incomplete messages. It seems to me a "Boxcar for Growl" would just be useful to see how many things you have to check. Not to say Growl can't be used for such a purpose. Just that it isn't currently.
Groxx 15y ago
>We need a tool that allows us to adjust the level of detail of the data we receive to align with the level of attention we have to give it. A very useful line, and also a very problematic one. Every system out there wants you to value it the most, so it tries to inflate its importance. I wonder if there is a solution, short of "Strong AI", without benevolent providers.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Article doesn't go far enough in my opinion. The biggest problem with notifications is not determining what qualifies, the biggest problem is each notification alerter lives in a silo. I can answer a notification on my iPad and then have to dismiss it on my phone and/or my web browser. If we could funnel all of our notifications through a single service (of which I'd like there to be several competitors) we could solve both problems. Dismiss your notification everywhere and have control to set rules (or importance levels) for messages.

44 points by filament 15y ago

Reading this it became clear that it probably makes sense to build a "boxcar for growl" - unfortunately I didn't find such a thing with a quick google. Still it seems to be history/central inbox for your unread notifications doesn't just make sense for your phone - it makes sense everywhere you receive notifications.

Groxx 15y ago
An interesting idea... but IMO, Growl tends to be used for very transient information. X sent a message = Y, Z finished, etc, all things which are likely visible some other way on your screen. An icon with a flag / number / color change, for instance. Growl tends to provide enough data to determine if you should switch applications then; I don't know if most of the messages have any real value beyond ~ a minute. Especially as they're often incomplete messages. It seems to me a "Boxcar for Growl" would just be useful to see how many things you have to check. Not to say Growl can't be used for such a purpose. Just that it isn't currently.

Groxx 15y ago

>We need a tool that allows us to adjust the level of detail of the data we receive to align with the level of attention we have to give it. A very useful line, and also a very problematic one. Every system out there wants you to value it the most, so it tries to inflate its importance. I wonder if there is a solution, short of "Strong AI", without benevolent providers.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

Article doesn't go far enough in my opinion. The biggest problem with notifications is not determining what qualifies, the biggest problem is each notification alerter lives in a silo. I can answer a notification on my iPad and then have to dismiss it on my phone and/or my web browser. If we could funnel all of our notifications through a single service (of which I'd like there to be several competitors) we could solve both problems. Dismiss your notification everywhere and have control to set rules (or importance levels) for messages.